After a brutal murder deep in the gold rush hills of California leaves her orphaned, young Sarah McKensie becomes something straight out of dime novels, a creature inspired by Burroughs and fleshed out by Kipling: the Wild Angel. Feral, raised by wolves and become more wolf than human, she roams the Californian wilderness, while the legend of the phantom child with the red-gold curls captures the imaginations of the hard-bitten miners and trappers who call the untamed frontiers home. But one man, the same one who killed Sarah’s parents, hunts her while wrapped in his new cloak of respectability, ostensibly to rescue this poor child from the dismal fate of forever living feral, but in truth to silence her, lest his own secrets be brought to light.
As years pass, and Sarah McKensie grows older, stronger, faster, capable of taking down mountain lions and bears with her bare hands and cunning, able to keep pace with the wolves as one of their own, her story becomes intertwined with Max Phillips, the man who first discovered her parents’ bodies, an artist deeking redemption for his own checkered past. He’ll teach her to communicate with her own kind, and befriend her, and provide a link back to civilization, and he’ll do it through … biscuits? Stranger things have tamed the savage beast. Also wrapped up in Sarah’s story is Audrey North, the aunt Sarah knew she had, Helen Harris, a young woman who’s never known her father and who seeks adventure, Miss Paxon, a Temperence preacher who tells fortunes on the side (or is she a fortuneteller who preaches on the side?), and the amazing Professor Gyro Serunca, a man quite skilled with getting people to part with their money for the wonders of his traveling circus.
Sooner or later, everyone comes to the mining town of Selby Flats, and when they do, the legend of the Wild Angel will explode into full color for a fascinated audience. Sarah and her parents’ killer will come face to face, and truths will be revealed in the best storytelling fashion. Action, adventure, jailbreaks, feats of acrobatic derring-do, an elephant, The Ancient Order of E Clampus Vitus, wolves, love, family members new and old, and secrets told will make this a good, fun story for everyone.
Mind you, it’s also part of a metafictional, metatextual three book experiment perpetrated upon us by the author, since while the cover says it’s by respected author Pat Murphy, the true byline is that of fictional author Max Merriwell, writing as equally fictional author Mary Maxwell. Several layers removed from the real world author, it’s a pseudonymical work of art. It comes on the heels of There And Back Again, a space opera retelling of The Hobbit “as written” by Max Merriwell, a fictional author who, it’s said, writes three books a year: science fiction under his own name, fantasy as Mary Maxwell, and mystery as Weldon Merrimax. One can only imagine what the third and final book in this experiment, Adventures In Space And Time With Max Merriwell by Pat Murphy, will be like. All we know is that it will star Max Merriwell, and tell of the events that befall him while he’s writing There And Back Again and Wild Angel. Does your head hurt yet? Mine certainly did the first time I tried to wrap it around this project.
Removing that from the equation, we’re left with a very competent, capable, entertaining myster/western/fantasy that combines elements of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, to create a feral beast-child with an American edge. Recommended, and highly enjoyable.